In the U.S. government is now looked upon as a provider of solutions to almost every problem imaginable, but with this Americans are paying a heavy cost in terms of lack of freedom. Thailand for better or worse, is a classic case of true laissez-faire in which there is a lack of government involvement in activities we have now started to take for granted in the U.S. Ironically, however, in Thailand one can feel a lack of freedom that is due to this laissez-faire attitude just as it is to their being many more times as many people per square mile here as there are in the U.S. To dramatize this, one only has to compare Walking Street, 2nd Road, and the Sois of Pattaya connecting them to the bicycle trails of the St. Louis and the St. Louis Metro East.

It has gotten to the point in the U.S. where we are constantly afraid of Big Brother. For example, head out to a bar and have several drinks. Just several because my example is not going to make much sense if you get rip roaring drunk. Then drive home. Inside you will get a deep paralyzing fear that a cop is going to pull you over and you will get a DWI for driving while intoxicated because your breath test shows that you had more than .08 % alcohol in your blood stream which can easily be as little as two beers. Or go to an area where there’s a number of bars close together. Now what happens if you don’t finish your beer in one of these places? At best the place is going to give you a go cup which is a non glass container and send you on your way. But chances are the bar will refuse to do so, its thinking that you might just have an accident on the way home, then turn around and sue the bar on the grounds that the bartender over served the driver. The fact that you were given a go cup so that you could continue your drinking would later be used as evidence against the bar.

I even know a case in which several under aged kids went into a strip club that was owned by a friend of mine. They showed the doorman fake ids. Then they had a few drinks inside the club after which they decided to leave. Club personnel after determining the boys had a few too many forced the group to stay in the club for over an hour in order to sober up. Finally the small group left the club and on the way home the driver managed to wrap the car around a tree. One of the boys was killed. In fact, he was one of the boys who had given the doorman a fake id. The parents of this boy then sued the club on the grounds that the club’s bartender had over served the driver.

Okay–getting back to my example. Imagine yourself sneaking a bottle of beer out of the bar and walking down the street to the next bar. Are you going to openly drink from the bottle? What happens if a cop should see you? You instantly think to yourself, he’s going to stop me for doing something illegal because I just have to be breaking some sort of law or another.

So imagine my surprise when my date and I decided to leave the House of Living Dolls Showcase to go somewhere else. My date told our waitress that she hadn’t finished her beer and the waitress simply told her to leave without it. We then walked out of the place and continued to walk down Walking Street as my date continued to drink from her bottle. She thought nothing of it. She was Thai and we were in Thailand where there is a spirit of live and let live and the police stay well into the background.

But try crossing 2nd Road on foot. It’s got to be one of the most dangerous activities you can do in Pattaya. The traffic seems relentless. There’s only just one traffic light within miles and that’s at Central Road and even here you have to play dodge them cars because they don’t have the little light that comes on that says it’s okay to walk and that you have the right away. Out there you have about as many rights as a rabbit running out in front of a car’s headlights at night. So you time your crossing very carefully as you consider how fast all the cars are traveling and just how much space there is between them, and then you make your move as you sprint out onto the pavement while imagining yourself to be the starting half back on a top professional football team trying to gauge the holes between all those huge opposing linemen out to tackle you because you have the ball. But you, you make one mistake out there in all that Pattaya traffic and it’s not a matter of being tackled by a two hundred and eighty pound lineman–it’s a matter of being squashed like a water bug by a car. So as you put your best moves on all those cars careening down Second Road don’t think for one minute that the driver who hits you is worried in the least by your family’s suing him for wrongful death–because your death will mean that’s just another stupid falang biting the dust, and there will be no lawyers coming to your family’s aid.

Consider Walking Street for example. The street’s called Walking Street because it’s the only street in Pattaya down which you can actually relax while walking without any fear of being molested by a car or motorbike whose driver has no respect for you whatsoever. And even Walking Street still allows motorbikes and cars on it until 7 p.m. at night.

There really is no excuse for allowing cars and motorbikes on many of the Sois intersecting Beach Road and 2nd Road. These are short streets lined with unimaginable numbers of beer bars (to those who have never been here before) on both sides of them. Most of the customers of both the bars and the bar girls working for them are pedestrians who have either walked to that particular Soi or taken the baht bus which they then got off of before walking the rest of the way.

So why in the hell do they allow all the cars and motorbikes on these Sois as their drivers motor through all the pedestrians beeping their horns while viewing them with disdain? Just what is wrong with making the owners of these motorbikes park either on Beach Road or 2nd Road which is still going to place them just a block or two from their vehicles. After all, it’s just two short blocks or one long one between these two main roads. Why not allow most of the patrons of all these bars to relax while going from place to place instead of catering to all these idiots who insist on motoring down these short little streets?

I mean, what is this, “see and be seen? Oh hello there, my motorbike is cooler than your motorbike and don’t you just love my style the way I ride it while trying to mow down all these pedestrians? My Honda Wave is prettier than your Yamaha.”

Just imagine how much nicer it would be strolling from bar to bar on these streets if they didn’t allow motorized vehicles upon them? And if most of the tourists think it’s nicer then they are going to want to come back more often which means more dollars will be spent there than ever before.

Instead, there is little respect for the person’s right to go out and relax while walking around. Instead pedestrians are forced to always have their antennae out for motorized vehicles or to suffer the consequences of being turned into instant road kill. And as for the person driving the car or motorbike, why should he care about whether he hits someone or not? No one’s going to sue him for it because they know they can’t collect so the lawyers won’t even take the case. Contrast this to the person who runs somebody else over in the U.S. when he comments to himself afterwards: “That was high priced road kill. Now the family’s going to sue me for five million bucks.

I laughed to myself upon hearing about the twelve year old boy who fell into a huge pot hole filled with water where they were doing all the construction was going on along Beach Road. The kid drowned and the company actually doing the construction which didn’t have a single warning sign out by the way nor had it put any kind of barriers that would keep pedestrians away from the huge gaping pot hole gave the kid’s family something like 500 bucks. The family was pretty happy about the 500 bucks and that was that as if the whole event merely proved: “Oh well, that’s what that human life is worth.”

Which it probably wasn’t considering that the basis value of all the components the human body is made out of amounts to only eight cents. So what about the pot smoking dope dealing unemployed low life American who manages to get himself run over in the middle of the night because he was out enjoying his latest heroin buzz before collecting his unemployment check the next day? If he’s only injured he’s going to sue for at least a million dollars and yet his value to the society that spawned him amounts to a negative ten grand at least.

The plain simple fact is that the Thais believe in live and let live. Either that or they believe in, “live and be responsible or die like stupid rabbit if you care to act like one.” The beauty of this whole thing is that even if you have to play dodge the motorbikes while walking down any street in Pattaya you can at least drink your beer while doing so and don’t have to constantly worry about someone always trying to sue you. Furthermore you get a much more realistic appraisal of your own value to society which amounts to less than it costs to make a wooden nickle.

But let’s turn the camera around 8,000 miles away and focus in on what’s happening in the U.S.

Here where I live there’s over 100 miles of bicycle trails. Many of these are old railways that have been rescued and transformed into some very nice narrow roadways on which no motorized vehicles are allowed. While riding my bike I only encounter other cyclists, runners, people out walking or kids out roller-blading. I can ride out from my garage, pedal up and down a few hills for one mile, then negotiate my bike out onto Keebler Road where I pedal another mile while being passed by no more than twenty cars before I get off the road onto the trail. This trail is very secluded being surrounded by lush bushes and trees all along its 7 mile length. Most of the time I will have a clear road ahead with no one in sight so its me, my bike and the wind. I can do this 7 miles and back while maintaining an average speed of 20 miles an hour. But it gets better.

Once I reach one end of this trail I can pedal down a hard road another two miles where I can link up with a whole new system of trails. But the one I was just on is in many ways one of the best as its smooth asphalt and it even has a yellow line down the middle to separate the slow traffic from fast riding pavement eaters like me. I’d say this trail is about the width of a single lane on the interstate. But that’s more than enough room to allow two cyclists to ride abreast. Just recently, however, the two miles of hard road on which I must be riding close to 25 miles an hour (because I’m deathly afraid of cars) has been replaced by a new asphalt trail so one now only has to pedal a quarter of a mile on that road they allow cars on. But to the right of this road is a narrow bridge lying out in a makeshift parking lot. Any day now this bridge will be hoisted up on top of highway 62 so the whole thing will be interconnected. I will be able to ride out to what had been the end of the main trail near me, then continue onto that narrow bridge crossing highway 62 and then connect with that whole set of trails going practically everywhere eventually wending my way home while being exposed to very little chance of a car hitting me. This will amount to a 35 mile continuous circle of bicycle paths.

Pattaya has its ocean. And I must love that because I am moving to a condo just 200 yards from it. But St. Louis and the surrounding area which includes the Illinois side called the St. Louis Metro East has its rivers. There’s the Illinois River down by Pere Marquette and Grafton with its beautiful bicycle trail there, the Missouri River much further West, and the Mississippi River separating Missouri from Illinois. It is across this river that the greatest icon signifying a people’s respect to the privacy of the individual and the primacy for preserving the beauty of the natural environment exists in magnificent testimony that the U.S. will allow you to flow like the wind powered by your own legs without having to put up with the crassness of motorized vehicles. This icon is the old Chain of Rocks Bridge.

One mile long, this suspension bridge was once state of the art when it was the crossing point for the old Highway 66, which has been designated as a national landmark. But as traffic on the highways got a lot busier the old bridge as well as the old highway 66 which could accommodate only two lanes of traffic became outmoded. The new Interstate 55 came in and a much larger (and uglier) bridge replaced the old one with its four lane capacity.

But the old Chain of Rocks Bridge is still there looming majestically over the Mississippi River with the new bridge in full view less than one mile to the north. And there’s no cars or other motorized vehicles allowed on the Chain of Rocks Bridge which is still being meticulously maintained by the state.

Just imagine what it’s like to pedal for an entire mile across the mighty Mississippi with all those I beams above you that form the superstructure of the whole edifice. More than 12 miles to the South you see the St. Louis Arch barely visible on the clearest days. At first you pedal uphill which puts you one third of the way across the bridge. Then it levels out and finally it grades downwards as you approach Missouri. Here you can really let your bike out as you let it fly to thirty miles an hour or so.

But once you have crossed into Missouri you encounter another trail. This one goes along the river for over twelve miles to the St. Louis River front. There are actually some of the old cobble stoned streets here. Traffic has slowed down but there really isn’t much of it during normal periods. As I approach the arch I start to gawk at all the people, and then I see the steps going uphill to the arch. It is here that I finally dismount, pick up my bike which doesn’t even weight twenty pounds, and start walking up the steps to the arch itself. There’s a couple of drinking fountains just underneath the arch and a park I continue on through riding my bike before heading back to the Chain of Rocks Bridge again.


Think Thailand’s got anything like this? No way. And it’s all because of the attitude of both the people and the government. Remember that in Thailand it’s Laissez-Faire meaning ‘hands off.” And by hands off the Thais mean that it’s not the proper role of the government to appropriate large amounts of money just so that a few people can go out on a bicycle to enjoy the beauty of their natural surroundings. Instead, the government and the people take the view of: “So what. Let everybody do pretty much what they want to do and if this means beeping your horn at every person who merely wants to walk down the street without being fucked with, feel free to do it. “As for all those people out there walking around, well fuck em, they should not be walking in the first place.”

Government here simply does not like to play the role of Big Brother the way it does in the U.S. which can be both good and bad. Take for instance the Prime Minister’s attempt to close down all of Pattaya’s bars at 1 a.m. I remember sitting at my bar stool at Foxy Lady until I don’t even remember when–3 a.m., 4 a.m., or even later? All I remember is having a blast as I watched the whole world revolving around me and all the pretty bar girls close to me. When 1 a.m. rolled in the bar simply turned its music way down while turning off most of its lights. I also distinctly remember several police officers walking by smiling as if nothing was wrong whatsoever.

And have we all heard about Bangkok or have we heard about Bangkok. The go go girls are no longer allowed to take off their clothes while dancing on stage. I guess that cut out most of the sex shows as well. But do you think for one minute that all this goody two shoes nonsense has affected Pattaya one iota? Not a fat chance I had decided as I watched Lee smoke a cigarette on the stage from her vagina.

You gotta love it. Such brazen contempt for misguided authority figures. But by the same token, when you are actually out on these terrific bicycle trails in the St. Louis area you often wind up asking yourself, “Why do I ever want to leave?”

So it’s a combination of both good and bad in both places. Me? I’m moving to Thailand. But will I miss the U.S.? Oh, I’m sure there will be plenty of those moments.